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I have never liked unions. When I became a civil servant, I joined one though.

If you remember the air traffic controller strike during the Reagan administration, you know that federal employees can't strike, not that I ever would. The federal employees unions have no teeth.

After 8 years with the government, I finally ran across a problem that I couldn't resolve by dealing with reasonable people, and I filed my first grievance. It wasn't responded to at the third step, and my problem worsened. I filed a second grievance that also wasn't responded to at the third step. The union refused to ask my agency to respond. The union contract required them to respond within 10 days. After nearly a year, I still hadn't received a response. The union told me that I had no right to complain. They had grievances that hadn't been responded to at that step, and had been waiting since 1988. My agency didn't even have anyone assigned to addressing union grievances.

The union took great delight in telling me that I was a pain in the a$$ and they wouldn't be taking my grievance to arbitration, even if I paid the cost out of pocket.

I was more of a pain in the a$$ than the union realized. I researched it and learned that there was an open season to withdraw from the union. I made up fliers at my own expense and had fellow employees who agreed with me post the fliers in their cubicles. I distributed the forms to allow people to withdraw from the union. I led a charge out of the union that cost them thousands of dollars per year in union dues.

The individual that I filed the grievances against continued to harass me. He was transferred out of my chain of command, and placed in my husband's. My husband was then harassed, and his grievances went unanswered. This individual harrassed several others too. Those individuals had paid attention to how ineffectual the union was, and because there were now enough individuals harrasses that there was a pattern, they filed EEO complaints that they won. To this day I don't know how much the agency paid out in legal fees, and lost EEO actions and lawsuits, but if they had paid attention to my grievance, and not just ignored it, they could have saved a great deal of money.

If the union had been working on my behalf, they would still have all of those employees as dues paying members, and there would still be the illusion that the union was there to protect the workers.

My battle was very public. Although most people didn't verbalize their thoughts, they were watching to see what the union was going to do. I was willing to tell my problems to anyone who was willing to listen, and eventually everyone know what was going on. I still am amazed at how stubborn and how stupid the union was.